War is very sad and small life is pathetically fragile at times.

The only thing about sanctions is that, like a lot of drone strikes, there are countless unintended victims. Cutting off aid to Uganda only increases the pain there.

I lack the skill to hold a story line for the length required for a novel or even a short story. I have never had an idea that could withstand a hundred thousand words, or even ten thousand words of rubber meeting the road.

There are other people, other economies, governments, cultures, religions, and destinies going on at the same time as yours. You have to widen the scope of your lens and start seeing more. Because Americans, it's easy to make us freak out. When the going gets rough, you have to get conservative. That's what's happened to America in the last eight years. I just try to point out that there's more going on than most people pay attention to.

I wonder if it is Australia's great distance from more populated land masses that allows its inhabitants to be left to their own devices, to be incredibly creative and, at times, to be wonderfully weird.

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.

I'm not a conservative or a republican but I know that there's conservative republicans who I probably vigorously disagree with but I also am smart enough, or something enough, to understand that they really think that they're right, and they're looking at me like I'm crazy.